"After six years of exclusive streaming on Twitch, today I am doing my first live stream on YouTube," said Ibai Llanos. Anything he says immediately becomes news, but some statements cause real earthquakes. It wasn't his first encounter with the red play button platform; a year earlier, the Bilbao native had hinted at his intentions to land in the ecosystem that created the profession of which he is the undisputed king: "Those 900 hours I was investing in Twitch, I will now invest in YouTube. It's less demanding. I want to spend more time with my family, take care of myself, and work on projects that truly motivate me," he said back then. But on January 17, the definitive announcement came, putting a face and eyes to a trend that was growing louder and could be summarized in a statement so repeated that we could call it viral without fear of being wrong: "I'm coming back to YouTube."
"Content creators are indeed returning to YouTube. It was easy to hear four or five years ago that the platform had become outdated, but there has been a pendulum swing that has brought it back to a leadership position," confirms Luis Calvo, content director of the Spanish agency You First, one of the largest talent representation and management agencies in Southern Europe.
According to Calvo, two technical advantages are driving this comeback: a very transparent and consistent monetization over time compared to the ever-changing algorithm of platforms like Twitch, which makes revenue forecasting difficult, and a very solid and adaptable intellectual property rights protection system by territories, allowing, for example, the maximization of sports rights. "For major content owners, this is a unique opportunity, and it explains why the Oscars have just signed a global broadcast rights agreement for their gala with YouTube starting in 2029," he explains.
This last statement actually encapsulates the crux of the matter in the comeback of a platform that for a few years seemed to have become a secondary option for those who were once called YouTubers and rebranded, with the change of the decade, as content creators. "YouTube is capable of competing with everyone," the expert points out. "Its shorts are already a challenge for TikTok and Instagram, its live streams are on par with Twitch, its focus on podcasts and music is a direct threat to Spotify, but its main competitor today is undoubtedly Netflix."
Are platforms becoming more like traditional television?
"Our power was amazing"
Outside our borders, the success is even more overwhelming: in the United States, YouTube has already achieved absolute reign, and the BBC announced a few days ago that it will start producing exclusive content for Google's video platform, a move that will kick off this month with the Winter Olympics.
However, to understand the true challenge that YouTube poses today for the creative industry worldwide, one must go back to how it all began.
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"I'm back on YouTube after 6 years," accompanied by a frozen emoji, Carmen Vallejo announced on Instagram on January 11, while raising the blinds in the living room and showing the snow on the rooftops of Madrid. "Hello, wonders, welcome to my channel," she greeted again, indeed, to the 186,000 subscribers of Carmen Wonderland, dormant since that distant February 26, 2020, when Covid was still a distant threat.
"Yes, I left, and moreover, I left badly, with a huge sense of frustration. I found it hard to accept that a platform that had worked so well for years stopped being that constant boom that seemed like it should last forever," she explains via email. "At the same time, I wanted to try something more dynamic, more immediate, like what Instagram and TikTok offered. So I made an almost natural transition: I adapted to what those platforms demanded, transformed with them, and in that process, I completely forgot about YouTube."
"YouTube is capable of competing with all social networks and audio platforms, but its main rival is now Netflix," she says.
The same path of departure taken by Carmen was also traveled around the same time by hundreds of young people whose online personalities were born and grew almost simultaneously with the platform but had evolved in different directions. Julen Hernández and Joaquín Reixa, a personal and professional couple whose respective channels, Hola Julen (129,000 subscribers) and Omglobalnews (152,000 subscribers), had remained silent for the last four years.
"When I started in 2012, it was just us weirdos who stayed home on Saturday nights recording ourselves instead of going out with friends," recalls Hernández in a three-way video call. "Little by little, we found each other and created a great sense of community. Around 2015, suddenly, super popular people joined, like Laura Escanes or Dulceida, and they gave the final boost to something that was already a fact: being on YouTube was cool." The exponential growth of subscribers was unstoppable. A new constellation of stars had been born who hadn't even had to leave home to succeed.
"We couldn't conceive anything outside the television environment, the studios, the gorgeous people, and suddenly, the younger generation had access to content created by people their age from their room. Everything was much more authentic, more real, it was told by any girl," recalls Bely Basarte, one of the first singer-songwriters born on the internet, who became popular by uploading covers every Friday at three in the afternoon. She created her channel in 2009, and in 2016, she was filling concert halls with fans singing along to her songs, with tickets selling out in minutes. "The growth was tremendous, everyone's numbers kept rising and rising, we had hundreds of thousands of views, it was crazy."
But that takeoff was so rapid, so explosive, so novel, and so resonant that at some point, the bubble burst. And it took with it a generation of pioneers. "By the end of the 2010s, the content was becoming increasingly eccentric, stronger, faster, super edited, and suddenly, there was a saturation among those of us who couldn't maintain those levels of activation. Exposure is very wearing," says the founder of Omglobalnews. At the same time, he says, they experienced a significant change in their relationship with the company. "At first, each of us had a kind of manager who helped us optimize our content and organized events and campaigns, the company was very involved. There was a very hands-on approach, and you were always a proud YouTuber even if you also created content on other platforms," he describes.
The crisis triggered by the humiliating video of one of their viral stars, ReSet, feeding a homeless man toothpaste-filled Oreo cookies, which ended with the young man being sentenced by the Supreme Court, changed everything. It was the year 2017.
"That sense of community completely disappeared. Creators were no longer the platform's priority, which focused on traditional media, which brought in many more visits, and on advertisers. We began to feel more vulnerable as the algorithm prioritized viral content over loyalty to a channel. Other platforms offered more immediate monetization, and we simply left," say Hernández and Reixa. The profession of YouTuber shifted to influencer, and the couple founded their own creative studio, Omglobal, which successfully rode that wave and has now diversified beyond social media. Bely, for her part, signed with Universal in 2017, voiced Emma Watson in Beauty and the Beast shortly thereafter, and today is working on her first book, La vida es esto, amor (Lunwerg), and has just released her third studio album, Amor Letal. "Those weekly videos that once brought me so close to my fans are now only for special occasions: a release, the promotion of a tour...," she says. "YouTube became, for me, a statement."
So what has happened in recent years to make videos stop being titled "I'm leaving YouTube" and start being titled "I'm coming back to YouTube"? Why have video views grown by 30% and weekly posts by 25% in the last year, while the reach of Instagram Reels has fallen by 35%, according to data from Metricool's 2026 Social Media Study? What bug bit Bely Basarte to return to vlogging last spring, or Carmen Vallejo to reconcile with the platform that saw her rise to fame?
Mainly, a new bubble bursting due to sheer saturation. "We've grown tired of apps where you have to constantly swipe. We want to focus on content for more than five minutes," says TikTok star Xaruh, paradoxically.
"For the modern viewer, the line between a Hollywood studio and a YouTube creator has disappeared. What they're looking for is relevance."
Francesca Mortari, Head of YouTube for Italy and Spain
She offers her more than 1.3 million followers basically what she says in her bio: "Life without humor is like a croquette without ham." And for the past few months, she has also been doing so in a longer version on her YouTube channel, which was a little 'neglected' until a fan's comment made her rethink her content: "You're my favorite YouTuber." "It made me appreciate my presence there. YouTube allows me to show myself in a more authentic way and build a solid relationship with my community. It's more relaxed," he says.
"I decided to come back after getting caught up in the algorithm game, consuming short videos that I didn't choose and didn't even remember a few minutes after watching them," agrees Enrique Álex, who just a year ago announced his return to YouTube via Instagram. "The fundamental difference lies in choosing what you watch," he continues by email. "Long-form videos are chosen and, in my case, watched for many minutes and mostly on a television. They don't just appear and get watched; there's a certain commitment behind that click on Play. I've been creating videos for almost ten years to leave something with those who watch them, not just to pass through their screen. For me, that carries more weight than any metric," says the travel influencer, who has more than 600,000 subscribers.
"YouTube is where creators build legacies, not just viral moments," says Francesca Mortari, Head of YouTube for Italy and Spain. "While other platforms focus on the fleeting, our creators build authentic studios and produce content that finds a loyal audience." Google's video platform has put the creator back at the center and entrusted them with a mission: to reinvent entertainment. "We have the size, community, and technological investments necessary to lead the creative industry into the new era," Neal Mohan warns in his New Year's letter. "We are not a social network, nor are we a traditional broadcaster," describes the head of the platform in our country. "For the modern viewer, the line between a Hollywood studio and a YouTube creator has disappeared. What they are looking for is relevance."
"For years, we have been moving towards formats that are increasingly shorter, faster, more immediate, closely linked to the gesture of scrolling without stopping too much on anything. That model made sense for a while, but when you want to connect with someone, understand them, and accompany them, you need time," says Carmen Vallejo, summarizing a change in trend that she has experienced as a creator, but also as a consumer. "Stopping to enjoy someone's creativity without any great artifice inspires me and, above all, slows me down, reducing the anxiety of a life that is too fast-paced. When you're looking for a real connection, long-form video is still irreplaceable.
Five facts for a rematch
12.1 million television viewers in Spain. YouTube is now the third most popular option on Spanish televisions, behind only Netflix and Prime Video. The platform has a 10.8% share, according to data from Barlovento.
76% more views. Clicks on each video multiplied in the last year and the volume of posts rose by 53%, compared to the decline of Instagram Reels, whose reach fell by 35% according to a study by Metricool.
$100 billion for creators. Over the last four years, Google's video platform has distributed more than ¤84 billion among creators, artists, and media companies globally.
122 million users per day. In Spain, 32% of users watch YouTube daily, and 18% watch it several times a day. 25% of consumption in our country is now via connected television.
200 billion clicks on Shorts. YouTube competes with everyone, including in short video, and the growth of its creations of up to three minutes is already a threat to TikTok and Instagram.